


Candlelight

by ForensicSpider98



Series: Light [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adam is dead, Canon Compliant Season 7, Gen, I'm Sorry, If You Squint - Freeform, If you want - Freeform, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, Post-season 7, Voltron Crew bonding, allurance, basically some feels, klance, pre-Season 8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 00:25:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17355470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForensicSpider98/pseuds/ForensicSpider98
Summary: There were two candles on the table. And one on the nightstand. One on the stove. One on the kitchen bar.There are two on the mantlepiece. And a single photograph.





	Candlelight

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I wrote this, and had my brother read it. And he immediately pulled up the SNL Christmas special and showed me the Christmas Candle sketch and OH MY GOD it wasn't intentional but I just couldn't fix it. Just assume Keith got that particular candle as a joke.

There were candles on the table, Shiro remembers. Two. Tall ones. And a vase with a cluster of bachelor’s button flowers in it. He remembers because he found it hard to meet the gaze of the beautiful man sitting opposite him.

"Look at me, Takashi. I want to see your face." And Shiro looked. "You have storms in your eyes," Adam whispered with a smile. "I've never seen anything like it. You're beautiful."

Relief and elation flooded through Shiro, and he grinned. He remembers the candlelight flickering in those hazel eyes, and thinking that they were the best thing he’d ever seen.

...

There was a candle on the nightstand, Shiro remembers. He doesn't remember who picked it out, or who put it there. He knows he used to. He wonders if he ever will again. So much of himself has been lost.

But he remembers the scent of mahogany and teakwood. He remembers how it mixed with their own scent as their bodies tangled together. Sometimes, they'd lie there, lacing and unlacing their fingers in the dark, and the soft glow of that candle would make a halo behind Adam's head, and Shiro knew this was forever.

Sometimes, back in his old quarters, Shiro swears he can still smell that long-gone candle. He often avoids the bedroom in an effort to escape, but he’s convinced it follows him around, clinging to him like a persistent ghost.

…

There was a candle on the stove, Shiro remembers. This one smelled like a Christmas tree. Shiro doesn’t remember a Christmas when he had Adam, but he must have at some point, because why else would they have had that candle?

But Shiro does remember the aroma of balsam fir and Adam’s shampoo. He remembers that soft brown hair against his jaw, the head on his shoulder, their hands at each other’s backs  as they turned in a slow, slow circle in the light of that precious little flame in the wee morning hours.

“Marry me,” he’d whispered.

“Of course,” Adam had whispered back.

…

There was a candle on the kitchen bar the night they’d parted ways, Shiro remembers. He doesn’t remember the color of the wax, but he knows they kept one there.

But Shiro does remember that it smelled like peaches and that Keith had gotten it for them. He remembers how it wasn’t lit when Adam walked away.

Shiro often wonders what happened to all of their little fires. Did they get thrown away? He knows the peach one ended up at Keith’s place, but what about the others? Did he make them up? Were they really there, or is he just misremembering? He’s not always sure what’s real anymore.

…

There are two candles on the mantelpiece. Neither one is scented. There's still too much in the air for that. In between the two candles is a single photograph. It’s not the one the Garrison uses, with Adam in his uniform. Instead, he’s in a pair of pants and a button-down, smiling.

Shiro notices the little things now. That one freckle smack in the middle of the tip of Adam’s nose. The dimple in his left cheek. The graceful way he held his hands, even while planting his feet so firmly that he was part of the ground, a monument to the unbreakable. The crows feet just beginning to come in after twenty-two mercilessly short years of life. That clever spark in his hazel eyes that Shiro wishes he remembered. He hopes he'd noticed when Adam was here. 

And Shiro tries his best not to forget anything else, even as that voice fades and that face becomes obscured by fog as all lost things eventually do. He can feel the man slipping further and further into the black waters of his mind even as he reaches for the last threads of his old memories. But still he tries, because Adam is the one thing Shiro is certain was real. He was. Shiro knows. He can still feel his lover’s warmth on his body in the cold night hours when sleep evades him. When he closes his eyes, he can almost convince himself that the fleeting memory of that warmth is Adam lying beside him. Almost.


End file.
